Multiple Web servers have been developed for conducting electronic commerce via the Internet. They enable vendors to advertise and sell various products to be delivered through a carrier or mail. A server computer system may provide an electronic version of a catalog that lists available items. A user may browse through the catalog using a browser and select various items to be purchased.
In addition, it would be desirable to provide customers with ability to buy certain goods immediately without ordering in advance. Therefore, a need exist for a retail system that would combine product ordering with the stores that keep goods for retail sale.
However, it is well known that the most expensive place to hold merchandise is on the shelf of a retail store because of all resources it consumes until that point, such as labor, transportation, and storage costs.
In addition, consumer study conducted by Anderson Consulting (now Accenture) and the Food Marketing Institute (FMI) showed that of the products consumers want in a grocery store, 6% to 8% are out-of-stock. For promotional items, this number jumps to 25% out-of-stock products. The study concluded that the out-of-stock levels add up to about $100 billion in lost sales for retailers.
Therefore, there is a need for coordinative merchandise management in a product-ordering system and retail stores to provide right product mix on the shelves but avoid stocking the retail stores with excessive amount of products.
Further, the traditional Internet-based system for placing purchase orders requires many interactions between the user and the server carried out via the Internet. As a result, the Internet-based purchase ordering becomes slow and cumbersome.
In addition, each purchase order transaction requires the transmission of sensitive user's information over the Internet. However, when the sensitive information is transmitted over the Internet, it can be intercepted and stolen.
Therefore, there exists a long-felt need for a product-ordering system that would alleviate the difficulties of Internet-based purchase ordering and avoid the transmission of the sensitive information over the Internet.
To manage a retail system combining product ordering with retail stores, it would be desirable to provide an efficient management system that enables a manager at a central location to coordinate inventory and merchandise management in each retail store, and in the product-ordering system, in order to meet customers' demand without having to stock retail stores with excessive amount of products.